Before a Fall
by x Varda x
Summary: Dr Rodney McKay’s arrogance was going to get the better of him one day. Too bad for him that day finally came today. Written for the H/C Flashfic #1 challenge on LiveJournal The prompt: pride, mercy and forgiveness. Teamfic


**Challenge #:** Written for the H/C Flashfic #1 challenge on the SGA H/C group over on LiveJournal (The prompt was: pride, mercy and forgiveness)  
**Title:** Before a Fall  
**Author:** x Varda x  
**Rating:** PG  
**Word count:** 3750  
**Characters:** McKay (h/c), Sheppard, Teyla, Ronon.  
**Genre:** Hurt/Comfort  
**Disclaimer: **"Stargate" and all related characters are the property of MGM Television Entertainment  
**Spoilers:** None  
**Summary: **Dr Rodney McKay's arrogance was going to get the better of him one day. Too bad for him that day finally came today.

**_Before a Fall_**

"I'm detecting a structure," Rodney said from the co-pilot's seat in the Jumper. He tapped on his tablet with a flourish of the hand at the end of the sequence and looked up.

"HUD?" He snapped at Sheppard with his voice and fingers at the same time.

John rolled his eyes, but brought up the display anyway. Rodney had used the tablet's interface to mark a point on the map of the planet they were scouting.

Rodney nodded in satisfaction and sighed nasally before he looked back down at his computer and started typing again. He muttered, "It's exactly where the database said it would be. For once."

Teyla frowned at the image and asked, "What is it?"

Rodney stopped typing and looked up, but did not meet Teyla's eyes as he spoke. "I don't know."

Ronon asked, "Really?"

"Yes, really," Rodney said indignantly. "We're lucky the database was so forthcoming with its location, but it didn't wish to enlighten us today as to _what_ it was referring to is on this planet."

"And you cannot tell from the structure?" Teyla asked calmly.

Rodney scowled and replied hotly, "No. Not unless _you_ can look at a lump of concrete and metal and say, 'Oh, that's a waterpark,' or, 'Hey, that one's a toilet.' But if I, clearly the most intelligent one here, can't figure out what it is, I don't think you could." He held his head up proudly, confident in his brilliant abilities, to the point of bringing out his usual arrogant streak for all to see.

Teyla looked like she wanted to inflict serious harm upon the annoyed scientist by the way her lips thinned to the width of paper and her eyes turned cold. She said nothing though, but aimed her glare at the back of McKay's head.

Sheppard smiled around at all of them to defuse the situation and calm Rodney down before he went off on an unstoppable snark filled tirade. "Well, that's why we're here isn't it?"

Rodney narrowed his eyes at Sheppard and then resumed typing with an annoyed grunt.

Ronon looked like he was enjoying himself as he lolled in his chair and swivelled the base slightly as he scrutinized each of the other occupants in turn like he was tracking a particularly troublesome dinner. He caught Teyla's eye and her face immediately softened. He smiled slightly at her and she returned the expression with slight confusion.

She drew in a deep breath and released it quietly before her emotions levelled off. She looked out of the front window as they came into land as close as possible to the structure Rodney had told them was the purpose of the mission.

* * *

Rodney held his scanner in front of himself as he walked towards the entrance to what looked like a small cave in the side the cliff they had found. Sheppard had parked the Jumper over a mile away and they had therefore had to reach the Ancient facility the old fashioned way; slogging through undergrowth and forest as buzzing insects and sticky heat from the tropical humidity surrounded them.

Rodney complained all the way, mostly to Teyla who had the misfortune to be nearest to him as they trekked. He sighed hugely in a great gust of expelled air which sounded like it should be used to push trees over or whip umbrellas inside out. But it merely growled in his throat and he waved his scanner around into the faces of his curious teammates.

He said angrily, "My feet are covered in blisters. I'm hot and fed up. And for absolutely nothing! I'm not detecting anything at all, apart from a few odd metal fragments and dull concrete about two hundred metres inside that dark tunnel."

Ronon peered into the doorway with his blaster drawn and ready. He held the gun up to his chest so that he could aim and fire at a moment's notice. He turned to Rodney and asked, "Why don't we check it out, McKay?"

John glanced around as he covered the team and looked for threats. His eyes tracked over the darkened entrance briefly as they roamed around the forest. He nodded, but did not look at McKay as he said, "I agree. There must be something."

"Perhaps they have a shield in place," Teyla added as she stood on the other side of Rodney and peered into the trees and giant leaves with her finger on the trigger of the P90 clipped to her tac vest.

Rodney gazed at the opening in the rock face briefly and his eyes widened as he grumbled, "But it's small, damp and dark and probably full of spiders and other unspeakable crawling things!"

John shuddered and said, "We've got torches and guns. It'll only take a minute."

Rodney held up his hands, "There's nothing in there! We should just go back."

"Not until we check it out. You can nurse your feet when we're done here." John insisted.

Rodney sighed heavily again and rolled his eyes. He did not speak, but started walking towards the opening. He turned to Teyla next to him and said to her, "I assure you, there's nothing in there. Nothing that is, except rats and man sized bats, lizards, ants and horrible spores that'll give us all incurable pneumonia!"

Teyla kept her lips firmly sealed; as did John and Ronon where they went into the cave first. Rodney pulled a torch from his tac vest and clicked it on, to add to the lights from Teyla and John's P90s.

* * *

The passage leading to the Ancient facility was pleasantly cool after the heat of the day outside. It was also very dark and narrow; a point Rodney reminded them of constantly.

"Is it just me, or is this tunnel getting smaller, the nearer we get to the exciting conclusion of this pointless mission?"

John turned back to him, his face ghostly in the eerie, unforgiving bright light of the torch Rodney shone in his eyes. "No, it isn't. And remember I told you not to blind people during missions? Especially people holding guns."

Rodney squeaked nervously and immediately lowered the beam to the ground. He then aimed it back up to the wall it had just flashed past. Teyla followed his gaze and her eyes widened when they settled on the faded paintings they had just found.

Ronon appeared unsettled by the stick figures and animals drawn in the rock. The only reaction from Rodney and John was curiosity, which quickly turned into indifference on McKay's part.

Rodney muttered, "Looks like the most advanced cavemen of the Pegasus Galaxy found this place and decided to do a little re-decorating."

He moved the light away and started walking along the tunnel again. Teyla kept her P90 trained on the images and her eyes seemed fearful as she regarded them.

Rodney turned around and folded his arms over his chest. The torch light danced wildly on the ceiling of the tunnel, but he ignored it as he said, "Hurry up and then we can get out of here. There are less than a hundred metres to go before we reach the end of this delightful burrow and satisfy ourselves that there really is absolutely nothing here worth our time."

Teyla lifted her chin and tore her eyes away from the pictures to look at Rodney, "You are correct. The people who were once here will have removed everything they were able to in their ransacking of this place."

Ronon nodded, "And no doubt left things behind for anyone else."

Teyla said, "Yes. We should proceed with much caution."

John frowned, "Who were they?"

Teyla suddenly became angry, "They go from world to world, taking what they like before moving on. They always leave these images behind to mark their passing."

She pointed the light at the paintings again and narrowed her eyes at a particularly gory depiction of a man cruelly slaughtering a large animal with a spear. Many of the other pictures showed the slaying of humans as they ran in terror from their villages. The attackers were always shown in glory where they had taken over and inhabited the houses they had ransacked.

Rodney tapped his foot impatiently and he shot Teyla a haughty look. He was standing a little way ahead of the others in the tunnel as they crowded around the wall paintings. He frowned as they made no motions to get a move on. "Are we going, or what?"

Teyla turned to him and then to John. "I am unsure about this, Colonel."

McKay sneered, "Oh, come on, you're getting worked up over some childish drawings? My niece's finger paint scrawlings are like the finest work in The Louvre compared to that poor excuse for artwork."

Ronon narrowed his eyes at McKay and said, "How can you be so certain it's safe?"

Rodney sighed mightily and defensively hugged his arms more tightly around himself. He said in a superior patronizing tone, like he was talking to a small child, "Of course it's safe. I'm a genius, remember." He unfolded his arms and pointed the torch down the tunnel in the direction they were heading. He started walking and said, "Nothing can go wrong, I assure you. This facility's had no power at all for centuries and I'm not picking up anything on the scanner."

He waved the bright screen around so that they could see it.

He suddenly stopped in the middle of the tunnel and dropped the device. It landed with a soft patter in the earth underneath.

Ronon said, "That won't matter. The traps are usually mechanical and almost impossible to release once they have you."

Rodney still had not moved or spoken and the torch slipped from his grasp and landed next to the scanner.

Sheppard frowned in confusion as Rodney started to writhe almost like he was trying to get away from something. But his body remained in place and he got no ground on whatever he was fighting against. A weak cry came from him and he stuttered, "Oh, god! Help me! I'm stuck!"

John was about to dash over, when Teyla gripped his arm and held him back. "Wait. Something is wrong."

Rodney's breathing was erratic and he moved his shaking hands up and held them against his sides like he had them on his hips, but they were too far up for it to be an aggressive posture. There was something not quite right with the way he was holding himself either.

Ronon went first and dropped down onto his knees. He used his hands to brush away the dirt and revealed several slabs covered by the earth. There was room to move around them, but an unsuspecting person would have found it harder to avoid them by luck alone.

Teyla and John followed him carefully and they reached Rodney as another spasm gripped him, making his entire body shudder, and he gasped.

"McKay, what is it?" John asked as he moved the torch light down the scientist's back looking for injuries.

Rodney panted and moved his hands away from himself. They were coated with blood which shone garishly red on his pale hands in the illumination. He bunched them into fists on either side of himself, but it still seemed that the others were missing something. He whimpered and said, "I can't move. Something's keeping me stuck here and it hurts! It's so hard to breathe."

John slowed down the movement of his torch and leaned in to where Rodney's hands were grasped in mid air by his sides. He reached forward with his hand and suddenly the light caught a glint on something. There was a piece of metal stretching from wall to wall. It was thin, only a few millimetres in diameter, like a skewer, and dull, so that he had not seen it at first. But the end to Rodney's left was slick and shiny with blood where it had pushed right through his abdomen and jutted out of each flank.

John held onto Rodney under his arms to prevent him from moving too much and said, "Don't worry. We'll soon have you out of here."

Teyla and Ronon both studied the walls where the trap had come from, but the rock face was smooth.

Ronon tried firing at the wall with his blaster, but the heat or the vibrations must have travelled along the metal because Rodney flinched and cried out in pain. The sound was muffled in the tunnel, but it still made the rest of his companions share a look of horror and Sheppard increased the tightness of his grip.

Teyla pulled some bandages from her tac vest and wrapped them as best she could around the metal piercing Rodney. It was too high up to have been running through his pelvis and too low to have fractured any ribs, but that meant it was still stuck through the soft tissue of Rodney's abdomen; no doubt it had already punctured several vital internal organs and severed dozens of crucial blood vessels on its passage through him.

Not to mention all the nerves it would have torn up and set on fire. That much was evident from Rodney's whimpering and struggling, but that reaction, although natural to try and get away from the pain, would only be making things worse and further damaging his insides.

Ronon took over from Sheppard to support as much of Rodney's weight as possible so that he was not tearing himself open against the metal impaling and trapping him. His breaths were short and fast and he muttered, "It hurts..."

Teyla crouched down and cleared the floor to check for more traps as she carefully slid her way past Rodney in the tunnel so that she was in front of him and could see his face while John worked at trying to free him. She reached forward and gripped his trembling, bloody hand in her own and held on tightly.

Rodney's head was hanging down by now and his teeth were gritted. He drew in a sharp breath and lifted his chin to look at Teyla. He whispered harshly, "I'm going to die here, aren't I?"

Ronon adjusted his grip and moved his arms around Rodney's chest so that he was hugging his upper body. In any other situation it would have been quite embarrassing as Ronon's front was now firmly pressed against Rodney's back, but in this case, the circumstances necessitated it. And it gave Ronon a chance to speak right into Rodney's ear. "Stop talking, McKay. You were wrong last time and you are again now."

Rodney could not move away from the metal. His tight expression, and the way that every now and then his face would scrunch up tightly as he held his breath, showed that he was in terrible pain and trying to suppress the worst signs from the rest of his team. The skewer spiking him was holding him in place and much of his weight was probably on it. Every time he breathed it must have been sliding a little inside him. It must have been excruciating and the constant agony and bleeding was successfully wearing him out to the point of exhaustion and unconsciousness.

Sheppard had fished a multi-tool out of his tac vest and located the bolt cutters. He worked them around the skewer, but the metal was too thick and sturdy for them to cut through it.

He huffed angrily at the useless object he held and said quietly, "I might need to go back to the Jumper and bring something to cut this. I'll try the saw."

Rodney's head tilted forwards again and there was a soft hitch in his rapid breaths as he sighed sadly. "I don't think I can last that long. I'm going to bleed to death."

He looked up at Teyla as she furrowed her brow and took hold of his other hand. He continued in a low, dejected voice, "I was wrong. I'm sorry. It can't ever happen again now."

She said, "You have nothing to apologise about, Rodney. You _were_ right. There is no power here, but the trap is mechanical. It was not your fault, as you would not have seen it. But we should have gone first."

Rodney peered up at her blearily and blinked slowly in the dull glow of torchlight. He mumbled, "No. I deserved it for my arrogance in thinking there was nothing dangerous here."

Ronon said, "I missed it too. We all did."

Teyla smiled sadly at Rodney, "You are not usually wrong, Rodney, and even when you are, you do not ever deserve something like this."

John cursed, "It's not working. Even this little saw thing isn't cutting through it. It must be made of something pretty tough."

Ronon had to increase the pressure of his grip around Rodney as he started flagging. John looked around the tunnel. There was no way Rodney could wait for him to dash back to the Jumper and grab something more substantial to cut through the metal. It would take at least twenty minutes at a run through the difficult terrain.

Rodney breathing was getting shallower and noisier as he struggled to remain conscious and still on the skewer.

Teyla brought his cold hands together where she gripped them and she looked down at the blood now smeared all over her fingers too. Her eyes suddenly saw the slab Rodney had stepped on to activate the trap.

She lifted her head up and said, "Perhaps the trap will reset if Rodney were to move away from the trigger. It appears that he is still standing on the slab and it is a little depressed in the soil."

Neither Ronon nor John had seen it as they had been focusing on keeping Rodney upright while they looked for a more practical solution.

Rodney mumbled, "I can't lift my feet. I'll be cut in half."

John rested his hand lightly on Rodney's upper arm and said, "It's the only idea we've got. Ronon will hold onto you and I'll grab your legs."

"That's going to hurt, isn't it?"

Teyla held onto Rodney's hands more tightly, "You are being very brave, Rodney. It will not be much longer now."

He sighed and clenched his teeth together and closed his eyes in anticipation and fear.

John worked his way past Rodney in the tunnel and joined Teyla in front of him. He looked down at Rodney's legs and said, "Don't move."

Rodney mumbled, "Har har," and then his head drooped down so that his chin rested on his chest.

John crouched down and wrapped his arms around Rodney's legs behind his knees. He said, "Ready?"

McKay whispered, "Not really."

Ronon grunted, "Yes."

Teyla let go of Rodney's hands to avoid crushed fingers as John said, "On three. One. Two. Three…"

Rodney's shriek filled the tunnel and drowned out the slurp of the skewer as it slid out of him and retracted back into the wall and he was finally free. The passionate, pained cry made Teyla cringe and twitch her hands involuntarily to cover her ears. But instead she moved across to help John and Ronon as they lowered Rodney down onto his back, far away from the trap activating slabs on the ground.

Rodney grimaced and all his muscles were tensed up as he lay there and tried not to move. John pulled a couple of bandages out of his tac vest and passed them to Teyla. Ronon was unzipping Rodney's vest and once it was clear, he peeled back Rodney's shirt. Teyla placed the bandages over the two small puncture wounds which were the only visible evidence of the penetrating injury which had caused as yet untold damage to Rodney's soft, fleshy insides.

John said, "I'll run back and get the Jumper."

Ronon looked up and muttered, "I'll come with you."

John nodded. Speed was of the essence so he did not argue. The source of the injury and pain had mercifully been removed from Rodney, but he was still bleeding externally, and no doubt, internally, from the wound. He was running out of time.

John and Ronon sprinted away from Teyla and Rodney in the tunnel. The sound of their footsteps and the light soon faded away to nothing, leaving her alone with the seriously injured scientist.

Teyla held onto Rodney's sides as she kept up pressure on the bandages and spoke to reassure him. "You will be alright, Rodney."

He narrowly opened his eyes and then his chest hitched as he drew in a sharp breath and held it as he screwed his face up and tilted his head back. He released the breath in a small whimper and when his head returned to its normal position the muscles around his eyes were tight with pain and his brow was furrowed in misery. Teyla opened her mouth and looked into his face in sorrow.

He grimaced and closed his eyes. He said quietly, "I'm sorry about what I said to you earlier. I was mean and rude, you didn't say anything to warrant that treatment. It's just how I am."

Teyla increased the pressure on his sides and he flinched and bunched his hands into fists in the dirt beneath him.

She said, "As long as it makes you feel better, you are forgiven, Rodney. Although I still believe that it was nothing necessary for forgiveness."

Rodney sighed softly and relaxed. "Good. Thanks." His head then tipped to the side and his mouth opened as he lost consciousness.

Teyla repeated, "You are a brave man, Rodney, and your actions and words will never be judged as anything less than worthy of praise to my eyes."

"I hope he's unconscious or his head will be too big for us to fit him in the Jumper."

Teyla was startled by the voice and looked up, "John!"

Ronon was behind him, "We brought a stretcher." He drew it forwards and the three of them helped lift Rodney onto the material.

John said, "We had to bulldozer a few trees and displace a family of monkeys to land outside the tunnel, but I think they were eyeing the tree next door anyway."

Teyla nodded and stayed by Rodney's side as John and Ronon lifted him up and carried him back to the waiting Jumper and home to Atlantis.


End file.
